Finding Caroline
by Lali-chan
Summary: Caroline wants to have the leading role for once. She wants to stop feeling like the supportive character in her own life.


Author's note: Hello everyone! I'm a huge Klaroline fan and I haven't written in forever and a day. So beware my writing spider webs getting all over your screen. I would also like to warn you that it might be days or weeks before my next update. And eventually, it might be that I'll even put this on hiatus due to lack of inspiration or because of real life related issues. I'm not trying to put you off the story, but I have a full time, 44 hours a week job and I'm in the process of writing my thesis for graduation in July so I don't have much time available. But this came to me and I've been denying my muses for literal years, so I had to give this a shot. Please let me know what you think.

* * *

Hi, I'm Caroline Forbes and this is the podcast series you'll never get to hear! You've probably already know me, well, you've probably seen one of my movies or seen me on TV. Haven't you heard? I'm America's sweetheart.

No, I stand corrected: I'm America's sweetheart's _best friend_. I'm the girl's best friend.

You see, romantic comedies have this basic casting structure. You have the girl, she's the one everyone will fall in love for, picture Elena Gilbert. You have the boy, he's handsome and perfect, picture Stefan Salvatore. You have the boy's best friend, he's usually funny, sometimes fat, and he's there to make the plot move along. He'll either give really good advice, or really bad ones. And then you have me, I'm the girl's best friend. I'm the girl who drops everything and shows up at her door with a couple of pints of ice-cream and really bad chick flicks after everything goes to hell in a hand basket in the romantic front.

_(Aren't I nice?)_

And then you have a couple of people to stand in the way of the couple, parents, bosses, ex-girlfriends, actual girlfriends and sometimes crazy stalkers. **BAM!** Instant chick flick! Just add a nice setting and a couple of pop songs.

It's not that I mind the romcoms... I love them! I love watching them, I love acting on them! But sometimes, some days, I really wish I was the one on the movie poster.

It's more than just a narcissistic desire to see myself with more screen time; you're just not going to last long in this industry if all you do is the supportive role.

Take Melissa McCarthy for example. She was Lauren Graham's best friend in Gilmore Girls for 7 years; you know how many projects she did in that time? How many did you watch? And then she was Christina Applegate's self-appointed friend for 2 more seasons.

She's a classic example of someone who has played way too many best friends and not enough leading roles.

But she totally turned her career around! Now she's Molly from Mike & Molly, she's done Identity Thief and she's even rumored to be on The Hangover Part III.

That's what I want. To be a title character, to know that in a couple of years, my career is not going to die just because I'm too old to play the best friend.

Oh God... this is why Bonnie says I'm a drama queen. Easy for her to say, she's playing Jeremy Gilbert's estranged ex-girlfriend in Secrets and her Jeremy/Bonnie has become the show's new OTP!

And Elena wouldn't really understand either. She's Elena Gilbert and everyone just dies over everything she does or says or wears. It probably helps her that she has this thing with the Salvatore brothers that nobody can explain. She keeps being sighted with one or the other or both of them and nobody knows who she really is dating, or if she's even dating one of them. Well, I'm not about to ruin her secret, even if this is a secret podcast nobody will hear.

To end this in a positive note... I think things me be turning around for me too... I've finally convinced my manager, Alaric Saltzman, into getting me an audition for something a little different. Maybe I'll even get top billing on my next movie!

* * *

If there was something Caroline learned from her absent mother was that you couldn't leave anything to luck and destiny. If you wanted something, you had to work for it.

So it was with that in mind that Caroline Forbes set out of Mystic Falls, Virginia with nothing but her car, clothes and the money from her college fund with Los Angeles as her destination. Like everyone else in Hollywood, she heard more "no" than "yes". Eventually she got a good opportunity and another one after that and a talk show interview in which she was funny, accessible and very appealing to a certain demographic.

What she needed now was a turning point to her career. She needed a project to convince people she could do this. That she was a real actress and not just some blonde bombshell.

This was why so much was riding on this particular project. It had to be a vampire movie, of all things. Though, to give herself some credit, this was different, it felt different. It was less teenager-y and a lot darker. It was a movie about a girl transitioning into a vampire as she deals with the loss of humanity and the possibilities of a human life. It wasn't one of those movies that made it seem like it was a glamorous life of pretty people who never die. She supposed there was some metaphor for growing up and changing as you do and there was some much to do with the project, so many places she could go with it.

But first, she had to go to the actual audition. Get out of her car and actually land herself the role before she started making too many plans.

* * *

"What have you done to me?" she felt the oxygen missing her as her breathing picked up even more speed, so much so that she was already feeling dizzy. "What have you turned me into?" She didn't allow him to answer as she let out a string of non-endings _'oh my God'_s.

"Calm down, it'll be fine." The man said in a boring tone, unimpressed by her desperation.

"You've turned me into a _monster_!" She spat the word in accusation, anger replacing the fear in every single cell of her body. "Why would you do this?"

"Because I was bored."

"Cut!" The casting director called and Caroline took a moment to calm her breath down and wipe away the tears that had escaped her eyes in the exchange. "That was great Caroline, thanks for standing in, Matt." The young man winked at Caroline and went to the back of the room. "This is a lot different from everything you've done so far, Care. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Yeah... I really do." And it did feel like it wasn't just that she wanted to do something other than the supportive role, she wanted to do **this**.

**ETA:** Just to make clear to everyone, that I am aware of other fanfics with similar plots but that while I'm inspired by them, I'm not at all copying then and I have my own little twists and turns. So any similarity to an existing story is mere coincidence.


End file.
